Advent Alphavet

 E = EMMANUEL

 

I’m a small town gal from a rural county…. those are my roots, it’s me.  During an organizing meeting this week with Community Health Organizers (CHO’s) in the Western PA rural counties someone shared that “city dwellers need to know the rural experience,” to which I shared, “I know it, those are my people. I’ve spent many days participating in that odd ritual of going to someone’s garage or barn, looking at a gutted, hung-up dead deer and exclaiming, ‘sure is a nice one.’”   Why one does that remains a mystery, yet daughters and siblings of hunters do it.

 

That introduction is to say that when attending college in downtown Pittsburgh I was very much out of my element.  I was scared. Uncomfortable.  I caught the bus each day and as I walked the Pittsburgh streets playing in my Walkman was the cassette of Amy Grant’s album, UNGUARDED.  I played over and over and over her song, “Everywhere I Go” as a rhythmic reminder that in the mean city streets I was not alone, yes, God was with me.

 

That is the faith statement of Christmas ---- Emmanuel, God with us.  That always brings me pause and awe and comfort…. God with me, with you, with our community, with our world.  Amazing.  Almost to the point of being so amazing why we hardly live as if it were so…….